I’m currently reading a book about the history of beer brewing in Minnesota and it got me thinking. Many of the records and advertisements from brewers in the 1800s were in German. I assume many of the first and second generation immigrants still spoke their former countries’ languages. As generations passed, so did the tradition of entire towns and communities speaking their non-English language. A friend’s grandfather was from Ontario and of Scottish descent. Apparently, though English was the language of daily conversation, when it came time to talk business his grandfather’s generation would speak Gaelic. I have another friend who mentioned his grandpa, who lives in northeast Minnesota, still speaks Finnish to other older people around his small town.
Are there any communities within the US now where English isn’t the first language of daily life for a significant percentage of the population? I’m aware that there are certain segments of cities with large populations that speak another language within their communities (in Chicago - Chinatown, Greektown, Ukrainian Village, etc). I’m more curious about things like rural communities that speak Pennsylvanian German.
Heritage languages from former colonies (French in Louisiana, Spanish in the southwest)
Heritage languages of American immigrants’ descendants (German in the OP’s example, more Spanish in the southwest)
Large immigrant communities (still more Spanish in the southwest)
Unless there is a continuing influx of immigrants or isolationist tendencies among the language group, most languages do not persist more than a single generation after the immigrant group. Exceptions abound, though.
In Amish communities, little kids don’t even know English until they go to school. The whole family will speak to each other in Pennsylvania German. They do all know English, though, because they need to know it to communicate with everyone in the English world and get their work done. They’re real quiet and seem shy when you speak to them in English but if you pipe up in PG then they just go on and on
It’s not a written language, I don’t think, so you won’t see advertising using PG.
Miami has a huge Haitian community and a huger Cuban community and there are several neighborhoods (though not towns or cities) within the Broward/Dade county area where a majority of the residents primarily or only speak Haitian Creole or Spanish.
Nonsense - PG very much has a written language and there are publications in it by Amish and for Amish. But if you’re not Amish you’re not likely to see them.
The town where I live has some large strip mall shopping centers which are almost exclusively Chinese, in that the signs outside are in Chinese first, and Chinese is primarily spoken by both patrons and help. I also live in walking distance from one of the largest Afghan communities in the US, I believe. Lots of older people in both communities don’t speak English well, if at all, and an important part of the listing for medical offices is the languages spoken there.
But my grandfather grew up in Mountain, North Dakota. And he said all of the residents spoke only Icelandic amongst themselves, and still did when he went to visit (mid 90s)
I have heard a number of people (shopkeepers, customers) speaking German in Fredericksburg, Texas. According to Wikipedia citing the Census, 12% of the residents speak “Texas German”.
That whole part of the Hill Country is heavily German- you still find guys with first names like Werner and Johann around, and you do hear German occasionally spoken as well.
The area a ways south of there (Schulenburg, Weimar, Shiner,
Gullah was alive when I was a kid (1970’s, Beaufort, SC), but is all but dead now. The “Gullah” I hear at festivals is a watered down version of what I heard in elementary school at the advent of busing.
As for Miami, Hialeah is a city in Miami Dade County where English is rare. Wiki says 90.01% white, with 4.1% non-Hispanic white. Overall 92.17% Hispanic or Latino, with 92.14% having Spanish as a first language. And I lived near there for five years, I am not just relying on Wiki.
In the Cajun strongholds around, say, Lafayette, you can find some Cajun French speakers, but few will speak it as a first language, and almost none other than a handful of very, very old people will speak it exclusively. My mother told me that when she was my age (1970s) she knew a lot of Cajuns, and the pattern was their grandparents (at that time born c. 1900-1910s) spoke only Cajun French, their parents (born c. 1920s to 1930s) spoke both Cajun French and English, and her friends (born c. 1940s-1950s) spoke only or primarily English. Louisiana school systems teach in English, and once Cajun kids were sent to school their English quickly outstripped their French. These days, I meet a lot of Cajuns myself, but even the older set will only know a bit of Cajun French and cannot communicate fluently.
There’s also the cities of Hialeah (92% Spanish as a first language), Medley (83%), Doral (75%), West Miami (87%), Miami Lakes (72%), Virginia Gardens (71%) and Hialeah Gardens (95%). Miami proper is 60%. All these numbers are from Wikipedia, and as many times as I’ve been to Miami I can attest that people who are not bilingual English / Spanish can be at a serious disadvantage.
I know you are looking for rural examples, but the borough of Queens in New York city is worth mentioning. It has over 2 million residents with many non-English speaking communities:
“In Queens, 48.5% of the population are foreign-born. Of that, 49.5% were born in Latin America, 33.5% in Asia, 14.8% in Europe, 1.8% in Africa and 0.4% in North America.”
There are a few towns in the St. John valley in northernmost Maine where a majority of people speak French as their first language. The area is just across the river from a francophone part of New Brunswick. The towns include Madawaska, Fort Kent, and (surprise) Frenchville.
When we lived in Lafayette in the late '70s, my wife was the quality control director of a vegetable cannery (Trappey’s) and the ladies who worked for her all spoke Cajun French to each other by choice. They all spoke English also, of course. I got the impression they spoke it at home too. The influence of oil was just beginning to be felt then, and there were lots of foreigners (from Texas) living there, so I suspect the kids now are much more English speakers than that generation.
Clarence Thomas has stated that he spoke Gullah as a young child, and that this is actually one of the reasons he is normally silent during oral argument - speaking non-standard English made him shy. (Jeff Toobin was rather skeptical about this claim in “The Nine”, but Thomas stands by it.)
